The present invention relates to a recording material feeding device that includes a recording material mounting face portion on which recording materials are stacked for being fed, a body slide portion that is attached to the recording material mounting face portion so as to be slidable in a widthwise direction or in a feeding direction of the recording material, a movable edge guide that includes a body operating portion having a guide face that contacts a side of the recording material while being fed and a fixing means that fixes a position of the movable edge guide in a slide direction of the movable edge guide, and also to a recording apparatus provided with the recording material feeding device.
Furthermore, the invention also relates to a liquid ejecting apparatus, such as an ink jet recording apparatus, that performs ejection onto a liquid ejected target material by discharging liquid, such as ink, from its head.
Here, the liquid ejecting apparatus not only includes a recording apparatus, such as a printer, a copying machine and a facsimile, which uses an ink jet recording head and discharges ink from the recording head to a recording material to perform recording but also includes an apparatus that ejects liquid corresponding to its purpose instead of ink from a liquid ejecting head, which corresponds to the recording head, to a liquid ejected target material corresponding to the recording material to attach the liquid to the liquid ejected target material.
In addition to the recording head, the liquid ejecting head can be a color material ejecting head used for manufacturing a color filter for a liquid crystal display, an electrode material (conductive paste) ejecting head used for forming an electrode for an organic EL display or a field emission display (FED), a bio-organic material ejecting head used for manufacturing a bio-chip, or a sample ejecting head that ejects a sample as a precision pipette.
An existing recording material feeding device of this type, that is, an existing recording material feeding device that includes a recording material mounting face portion on which recording materials are stacked for being fed, a body slide portion that is attached to the recording material mounting face portion so as to be slidable in a widthwise direction of the recording material, a movable edge guide that includes a body operating portion having a guide face that contacts a side of the recording material to guide feeding and a fixing means that fixes a position of the movable edge guide in a slide direction of the movable edge guide is disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 2906995 and Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2002-255360.
The fixing means includes a notch column that is provided on a surface of the recording material mounting face portion along the slide direction of the movable edge guide and an engaging protrusion that is provided on the movable edge guide and that engages a notch of the notch column to realize the fixed state. Then, the engaging protrusion is disengaged from the notch by pressing an operating portion with a finger, the movable edge guide is moved in the widthwise direction, and, when the guide face of the movable edge guide contacts the side of the recording material, the engaging protrusion is engaged with the notch and fixed to the position by separating the finger from the operating portion. Thus, the position of the side of the recording material is regulated.
However, the pitch of each notch forming the notch column, that is, the resolution, has a minimum pitch on the basis of the limit of its manufacturing technology; the notch column could not be formed in the resolution of pitch that is further smaller than the minimum pitch. Specifically, at present, it is difficult to form the notch column at a pitch of 1 mm or below. For this reason, the resolution of positioning of the side of the recording material is limited to 1 mm, and it has been difficult to position the side thereof with a further fine resolution. However, in order to realize a further improvement of recording quality, it has been desired to provide a recording material feeding device that is able to feed a recording material by positioning the recording material with a high resolution that exceeds the limit of manufacturing technology for the notch column.